Sustainability Report 2015
Emissions
Hannover Re's CO2 emissions in Hannover in the year under review amounted to 8,581 tonnes, an increase of 10.0% year-on-year. The measured emissions are indirect CO2 emissions attributable to the purchase of energy or business trips. The calculation is based on the consumption figures for electricity, district heating and paper as well as our business travel.
The rise in our CO2 emissions in the year under review is due to the increased number of business trips associated in some instances with the cultivation of closer customer contacts. Such trips often cannot be replaced with videoconferences and are therefore subject to considerable fluctuations. Since 2012, however, videoconferences have largely replaced travel motivated by internal reasons, i.e. between different Hannover Re locations.
CO2 emissions
Business travel accounts for around 96.8% of our total emissions. Since 2007 we have therefore worked together with the climate protection organisation atmosfair to calculate, control and compensate them. The CO2 emissions caused by business travel rose sharply in the year under review to 8,306 tonnes.
CO2 emissions in 2015 according to causation
The greenhouse gas emissions resulting from business travel are caused almost entirely by air travel.
CO2 emissions from business travel by means of transport
CO2 emissions from business travel
Measures to reduce CO2 emissions
We achieved our goal of operating the Hannover location on a CO2-neutral basis by 2015 to a level of 97% in the 2015 financial year. Since 2012 we have obtained our electricity from renewable sources and we are planning the progressive roll-out of this measure worldwide. Furthermore, the photovoltaic facility installed on the roof of the Home Office building in Hannover in November 2013 enables us to avoid some 130 tonnes of CO2 emissions annually. Since 2008 we have offset the CO2 pollution associated with our air travel by making voluntary compensatory payments to the climate protection organisation atmosfair.
Paper-intensive publications such as our Group Annual Report, quarterly reports and documents for the Annual General Meeting are printed on a carbon-neutral basis. Publications such as this GRI Report, for example, are made available to our stakeholders only in paperless form as an HTML version. We have committed ourselves to this approach in our internal Corporate Design Manual.
In addition, we reduce, where possible, our CO2 emissions by replacing business travel with video conferences. In 2015 around 2,235 video conferences were held with two or more participating locations. The calculated savings in CO2 emissions through video conferences are estimated. Assuming that, apart from the host, one person would have flown for each participating location, the 2,235 videoconferences correspond to around 24 million kilometres flown. Working on the basis that roughly a third of videoconferences were held as replacements for air travel, this produces a saving of approximately 7.5 million kilometres flown; using the calculation method of our external service provider, this is equivalent to a saving of some 2,900 tonnes of CO2 emissions. Going forward, we remain committed to making greater use of videoconferences.